Wednesday, February 02, 2005

There's a tiny bird wiggling the leaves of the myrtle on my little back patio to catch my eye. Sometimes it perches on the rim of one of the flowerpots where I planted some better-late-than-never pansies last weekend. It fusses about in the loose dirt. Fritzi would know exactly what kind of bird it is. I can't find it in my Birds of North America field guide. As I search through the warblers and vireos, I discuss the identification process with Mom. She feels very close, but doesn't tell me the answer, even when the little bird disappears still unnamed.

Such fun times we had watching birds in the backyard, or trying to identify birds by long distance phone calls and letters. While I was in Lincoln I remembered the strange bright morning after a big snowstorm in the Sixties when we had a confused snowy owl in one of the pine trees. A snowy owl has no business being in Nebraska, but there it was. Neither do pelicans, but we saw one of those once as well. Not so very long ago some cute small owls made a nest in a hole in the maple tree next to my folks' patio, and raised a family of owlets. I think it must have been about 1999, as I got to see some of the baby owls perched on the street light out front and in the locust tree when I was home with my boys. Watching and listening for the owls, and learning more about them was fun for all of us.

Mike has written my dad about his memories of a special trip together to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo to visit the jungle exhibit. I bet it was during that same trip home in 1999, right after I bought the little Buick. Fritzi shared many wonderful visits with us to the Henry Doorly Zoo when my boys were little. It was a precious gift that we lived in Omaha, just sixty miles from Lincoln, and could spend so many days together. The aviary is still one of my favorite places in the world. Fritzi even overcame some squeamishness to enjoy picnic lunches in the aviary with her grandsons.

Tomorrow Steven will meet with the chair of the art department at the University of New Mexico. I think it would be a terrific place for Steven to go to college. The chairman's bio says he was influenced by the teaching of Richard Diebenkorn. My oils professor at UN-L long ago was also influenced by Diebenkorn, so I was influenced indirectly. I got to share a Richard Diebenkorn retrospective at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art with Fritzi and my dad. What a splendid day that was! I was stunned to look back and find the exhibit was in 1998. Six years seems like yesterday. Fritzi was in heaven spending a morning at her much-loved Kimbell Museum viewing Renoir's portraits with her grandchildren, a lunch at La Madeline, and then getting much more excited about the Diebenkorn exhibit than she had expected. She was absolutely glowing. I'm glad she got to see the new Modern building more recently.

I experience these memories now without tears for the most part. Fritzi wasn't glamorous. She was much like the tiny grey-green bird with the bright black eye. She was lucky to know exactly what gave her the most joy; grandchildren, art, good food, letters, polite golfers, and two beers with conversation before dinner every evening with my dad for fifty-five years. Today I feel Fritzi's telling me to focus on what gives me joy and eliminate most of the rest.

1947 - "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South
Music by Allie Wrubel
Lyric by Ray Gilbert

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AnchorWoman is the daughter who anchors, securing her dad, providing a rock. Sometimes together they haul up a slimy, salty chain of memories. AnchorWoman is not the good hair tv news personality smiling until the commercial break.